The Internet is an increasingly important place to work, play and learn for both adults and children. At the same time, Internet users, particularly children, face a variety of risks including the misuse of personal or sensitive information. For example, chat rooms and instant messaging on the Internet are very popular activities for young people, especially teenagers, but it is also the area where they are most likely to get into trouble. In a chat area, it is easy for a child to forget that he or she does not in fact know the true identity of the person on the other side of the conversation.
There are many web sites providing chat room safety tips or advising of ways to avoid problems in chat rooms (see, e.g., http://www.siec.k12.in.us/˜west/wdu/chat.htm or http://kids.getnetwise.org/safetyguide/technology/chat). These include: defining one's screen name to be different than one's e-mail address; prohibiting children from participating in adult topics; and never giving out personal information such as phone, home address, or credit card data.
Additionally, some software systems block sensitive personal information from being transmitted through a predefined children's chat room or do not allow children and teens to use the Internet if their parents are not home, using time-limiting software. Other software applications limit access to a specific list of web sites that have been classified as inappropriate or bad, in that such sites contain profanity or subject matter of a sexual nature. Some filters block only the “bad” words, but not the surrounding text. Some filters apply to web sites, others to e-mail, chat, “instant” message systems, newsgroups, or a combination thereof. Most filters allow parents to turn off or edit the key word list.
Many companies that produce web sites voluntarily rate and label their sites, using a system knows as “PICS” (Platform for Internet Content Selection). This information can then be used for controlling access to web sites.
The invention seeks to improve upon the prior art by classifying or categorizing the age and/or other attributes of Internet (or other computer network) users based on an analysis of textual and other data generated or provided by the user. This information can then be used in a variety of ways by supervisory software systems, for example, to notify when a pair of people, such as an adult and child, are conversing or communicating about inappropriate subjects.